Utilities under fire for Superstorm Sandy response

Dec. 2, 2012

Orange & Rockland Utilities workers Mike Stone and Jim Mills perform maintenance on power lines in West Nyack on Monday. Much of the regularly scheduled maintenance on the lines was put on hold after Superstorm Sandy knocked out power to much of the region.

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As Superstorm Sandy left more than 1.3 million people without electricity, serious missteps by power companies - a lack of coordination with area emergency management officials and delays in sending workers to some hard-hit towns - may have prolonged the outage by several days, according to local residents and government officials.

Though the storm was among the largest ever to hit the Lower Hudson Valley and caused widespread destruction, town supervisors and utility customers are lamenting the "slow" and "mismanaged" two-week recovery effort that left nearly 1.4 million customers ...